Japanese ministry names and their offician English translations.

Romanizations for names of many cars sold in Japan

In this list, manufacturer names appear in bold, with model names beneath. Bulleted entries below a model name are model variants.

Chris Green was kind enough to compile the following list of Japanese car names for inclusion with the Honyaku home page. Since the proper romanization of these names (normally appearing in katakana) is quite problematic, this should be a real timesaver. All formatting errors are my responsibility.

The following is a sample of the data I translated in preparing the sections on special effects (擬声音・擬似音) during the process of rendering The Five Star Stories into English and which now appears with illustrations in the Appendices to the published series.

Big numbers

Prepared by Adam Rice

Prepared by Kevin Seaver

The Japanese have been borrowing foreign words ever since their first encounters with Chinese culture nearly 2000 years ago. However, the words often do not survive the borrowing process unscathed. The following is a list of roomaji (Roman alphabet) abbreviations, wasei Eigo (made-in-Japan English), and borrowed words and phrases that have been abbreviated and recombined beyond recognition. What they have in common is that almost none of them are used outside Japan. (Well, Pokemon has gained international currency in the past year or so, but the rest are pretty obscure.)

The glossary began as a catalogue of words that I myself had encountered in translation jobs, personal reading, and travels to Japan. I learned about many of these words from members of the Honyaku Internet mailing list. Some of them came up as genuine “head scratchers,” words and phrases that were impeding someone’s progress in a translation job. Some of the technical and engineering terms were first compiled by Bill Lise and are used here with his permission. Most of the automotive terms were originally compiled by Stephen A. Carter and are also used here with permission. Others came to me through private e-mail from readers of earlier versions of this glossary. You all know who you are, and you are too numerous to mention, but thank you!